Participation in muscle conditioning and exercise routines produces various health benefits. By sustaining a routine regularly for a prolonged period, the exerciser can increase overall strength and fitness levels and develop a toned body and sculpt muscles. Such exercise routines can also be used to rehabilitate injuries or lessen the effects of temporary or permanent physical limitations or disabilities. Many people choose to perform their exercise regimens in public gyms, which offer a wide array of workout equipment and classes for exercising all major and most secondary muscle groups in the human body and acquiring cardiovascular workouts. For many other people, however, work and domestic demands, or other burdens or encumbrances such as temporary or permanent physical limitations or disabilities make it impossible to visit the gym on a consistent basis.
As an alternative to exercising at public gyms, other individuals choose to exercise at home. However, home exercise is not without its problems. For one, most homes lack sufficient space to accommodate exercise equipment. Additionally, exercise equipment tends to be relatively heavy and cumbersome, making its transport and storage within the home difficult.
The vast majority of exercise equipment directed to lower body exercises provides a dedicated bench or seat that the user must first move themselves into in order to accomplish the exercise. Such devices can either be of limited or no use to individuals who have physical limitations or disabilities such as those temporarily or permanently confined to a wheelchair. For many such individuals, it is either not possible or not safe to attempt to move themselves from the wheelchair to the exercise device and back even when assisted. Other devices that can be used by a person while remaining in a wheelchair or the like, frequently fail to possess adequate safety features or fail-safe mechanisms so that user is not forced into a potentially dangerous position when they are too tired to continue to do the exercise.
Still another problem is that many home exercise devices isolate on a particular muscle group without also training the opposing muscle group equally, leading to disparities in opposing muscle group strength and flexibility. Imbalances between opposing muscle groups can render the exerciser prone to injury, especially muscle pulls and tears.